WiRED article about Chinese DJ culture..
i got this off http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59299,00.html and found it to be a very interesting read.
It's Hard, Being a Chinese DJ
By Hector Mackenzie
BEIJING -- Aspiring DJ Xiao Lin was prepared to beg, borrow or steal the 400 yuan (U.S.$48) she needed to secure a pass for master mixer Paul Oakenfold's Great Wall of China spectacular in April this year.
When it was rumored that the man who has worked his sonic magic for everyone from Madonna and U2 to New Order and The Happy Mondays was to play an outdoor set at the foot of China's best-known visitor attraction, the 19-year-old's first response was to get online.
Checking in with the growing community of online clubber friends she has built up over the past 18 months, the Beijing graphic design student then slipped into her favorites cache to select the English DJ's official site for confirmation of the news.
It wasn't long before "Stanley's Theme," a pulsing cut from the soundtrack of hacker movie Swordfish was blasting out of her computer speakers from the site's in-built mini jukebox. Her appetite whetted, she moved across to yesdj.com, arguably the most popular of a growing number of Chinese sites dedicated to swapping and downloading music.
"This is where I get a lot of my stuff," she said with a mischievous smile, referring to the vast stockpile of music she has downloaded and burned onto dirt cheap CD-ROMs for use in her own sets.
Welcome to the resourceful world of the Chinese DJ.
Pioneering "computer DJ" Christiaan Virant, a bip-hop records recording artist also based in Beijing, has witnessed firsthand the growing popularity of downloading DJs.
They bypass hurdles unthinkable in the West to grab cutting-edge music "on the same day as it's released anywhere else in the world." These are then typically burned on a CDR or played as MP3s in live sets. It's as simple as that.
Interestingly, there are two distinct DJ cultures in China, according to Virant. And ironically it's DJs in the hinterlands far, far beyond the sophisticated confines Beijing, who are the most tech savvy.
"In Beijing, vinyl rules and any DJ worth his salt shuns the use of CDRs, CDs or any other 'high tech' method of getting their tunes to an audience," he said. "Outside Beijing, DJs have no such bias and so were actually the first to make widespread use of the Internet."
"For locals, DJ-ing is an expensive passion because vinyl is simply not available here," Beijing DJ Yang Bing said. "It costs around RMB 100 (US$12) to buy a vinyl single over the Internet and you can only listen to a pre-purchase sample if you have the right technology."
Did someone mention technology?
Shanghai writer Mian Mian says of Chinese youngsters: "They can't casually cruise record shops as their western counterparts do, chewing gum while plucking up their favorite albums. They're forced to come up with peculiar methods to lay their hands on the desired new stuff. And they find ways."
While exploring the emerging Internet music scene as a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, DJ John von Seggern, came to the conclusion that "the significance of Net access for musicians in a country where the flow of information is heavily restricted and censored can hardly be underestimated."
Now living in Los Angeles, von Seggern distilled his experiences in China from 1995 onwards into an enlightening paper "Network Effects: Use of the Internet in the Chinese Rave Scene."
Finding that Internet use was increasing most rapidly among the 20- to 30-year-old age group most attracted by the urban dance club scene, he discovered a growing online community downloading tools for producing and distributing their own music. Scanning the world music press online for the latest news and reviews, music-mad youngsters would then downloading and share the latest tunes.
He was intrigued to discover that among some hip-hop DJs in China, only tracks, which have been downloaded, are considered truly "underground" and thus valuable. Music available for purchase (the vast majority in any case pirated), is considered commercially tainted.
Even Beijing's hippest vinyl junkies need the Net, says Virant: "More and more DJs are using the Web to order vinyl using their friends' foreign credit cards."
Many DJs outside Beijing play entire sets downloaded from the Web; for the majority there is simply no other choice. In the southern city of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, Virant has come across "young kids playing the hippest, hottest stuff fresh out of London, Berlin and everywhere else.
"Chinese kids are stunningly tech savvy and many have stunning music collections. As the only source of what is happening outside China with regards to music, the kids have mastered ways to use the Internet to maximize their listening enjoyment.
"Not only do they download entire albums, they collect reviews, translate them and swap them with their friends. Some of the kids down in Guangzhou (capital of Guangdong Province) are better informed than most foreigners I know, because they have to work harder to get their info and thus prize it more."
Ming D'Arcy of the DJ collective Yum Cha Cha has his own take on club culture and the Internet. He told Asiahype.com: "Technology is the major factor in taking away the monopolization of the artists and the record companies. Before, the only place you could hear a particular dance song was at a music or a party."
If you didn't go, you never knew it existed. If you found it, you had to go to a record store and buy the physical record. Number one, you had no money, and number two was the tyranny of distance. Now, with computers you can get the global community on-line. Through chat-rooms, or e-mail."
The lesson was quickly learned in China.
Still on a high after the Oakenfold set (she called in a few favours and pleaded with several friends to raise the ticket price), Xiao Lin is now more determined than ever to fulfill her dream: "Can I make it as a DJ? Why not? Just you watch me."
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